HP 280 G2 MT Intel BIOS upgrade A0.41 SP85158 causes PC not to POST

[normsland]

Hi All

I have just applied SP85158 BIOS A0.41 to fix the Intel Spectre problems

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c05869091

and now the PC fails to POST. I found the only way to boot was to unplug the attached SATA Crucial MX300 SSD drive. Then the HP 280 G2 would POST. There is nothing wrong with the SATA SSD. Put it in a caddie works fine, plugged it in to a laptop works fine, even updated the SSD firmware. Still doesn’t work.

After reading through Loading Results HP Desktop PCs - Recovering the BIOS I spent an evening trying Windows key + B. https://support.hp.com/gb-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-280-g2-microtower-pc/8741823

To find the only firmware it would apply via BIOS recovery (those 8 beeps of fun) was another bug fix post Spectre (A0.35) and still won’t boot from SSD unless it’s in a USB caddy.

Anyone else had issues with BIOS A0.41? The previous BIOS A0.27 worked faultlessly. Are HP going to fix this? Not great for 1.5year PC!

[DGroves]

check your bios settings, i suspect the update reset the settings back to defaults and you need to reenter the settings you had.

you can also as a quick test, remove the drive insert a new blank drive, check that the bios sees it and then prompts you with a no bootable os found now insert a install disk and run it till you get to the screen where it shows which drive to install to......if it shows your blank test drive, the hardware is fine and your problem is with either the orignal drive or bios settings

the bios setting you need to check is UEFI or legacy and if uefi mode should fastboot be enabled or disabled

[normsland]

Hi there,

Thanks for the advice. Used the Windows 10 Media Creator Tool to build a bootable USB stick. Plugged in an old Crucial M4 SSD from a laptop and I can confirm that the Windows 10 installer saw the drive partitions on the old Crucial M4 SSD.

So I went through all of the UEFI modes disabled fast boot. Still no post shows memory, processor information but locks machine.

Enabled legacy boot from secure boot and the system still fails to post. Locks up with memory, processor information. It offers ESC for startup menu but the ESC does not work. Keyboard is plugged in directly to a USB2 port on the mainboard.

Any ideas or options? Is it somehow possible to get my system back to an earlier BIOS version?

Thanks

[DGroves]

it's not a bios issue! please stop trying to roll back the existing bios, either a bios setting has changed, or the drive itself is having some sort of problem reset the bios back to defaults

you can try one last thing before doing a reinstall and that's running a "MBR" repair on the drive  rebuilding the drives master boot record may resolve the boot issue remove any other hard drives and boot with a util disk/usb key that has the mbr command on it

https://neosmart.net/wiki/fix-mbr/

if not reset the bios back to defaults, back up your data and reinstall windows  to the drive you will find that the install will work withot any problems and the drive will again be bootable

[normsland]

Hello

Thanks for your help until now. There is definitely some type of incompatability between my Crucial MX300 275GB SSD and the HP 280 G2 A0.41 BIOS. It worked fine before the BIOS upgrade. I have plugged the Crucial MX300 in to a Lenovo X220 laptop, at work a Dell Optiplex 9010 and a Dell Optiplex 9020. In all cases the drive appears fine in the BIOS and the Windows 10 USB stick I have built detects the drive.

It is only the HP 280 G2 that refuses to BIOS POST and locks the machine up. I have bought a PCIx SATA card, fitted that in the HP 280 G2  and the Crucial SSD seems to boot correctly. Therefore I can only guess that there is something in the latest BIOS which is causing the issue. Or maybe secure boot? But that is disabled. The only thing I haven't tried is resetting the certificates in secure boot.

[DGroves]

you might want to contact crucial support i doubt hp can/will help since this ssd is not a model that hp ships/offers with this model workstation

[normsland]

Thanks DGroves for your help. Unfortunately Crucial werent any help either. Since the SSD drive works in other machines they are saying it's not a problem with the drive. All I can hope is that HP brings out another version of the BIOS which the drive decides it wants to work with. In the meantime it seems to be working ok from my StarTech PCIx SATA card. 

Thanks

[ewilson248]

This most likely IS a BIOS issue.   I have a Pavillion 510-p024 with the 100% identical issue. I even sent the drive back to Crucial thinking that was the issue.

If you look around the HP support forums you will see that several updated BIOS files have caused this to happen under different HP desktop platforms. I myself was bit by this and got burned. My only recourse was to go back to the original 2TB POS slow as you know what spindle drive that came with the PC.

Unless you have a PC still under factory warranty or have extended support your are SOL.  Even if you are covered by HP, I think a fix is a LONG way off.  It many never come honestly. HP only cares about 1 year of support for ANY hardware device regardless of how much you have spent for the iniial purcahse or what level of service you are currently paying for.

FYI: HP has told some users that the BIOS is only REQUIRED to support the orignal configuration of the PC.  So, using this twisted logic if the PC was not orignally sold by HP with an SSD then the BIOS does not have to support an SSD.

By the way: Do not bother trying to downgrade the BIOS either.

A BIOS downgrade is locked out becuase this is a "security" patch.

[normsland]

Thanks ewilson248. I thought as much. I already spent hours going through all of the BIOS checking if they booted or not. I didn't think it was my Crucial drive because it was working absolutely fine before the BIOS upgrade. I already sold the 1TB WD Blue that the machine came with sometime ago on ebay. 

The only solution is to either buy a different brand SSD and hope it works. Or you can do as I have and buy yourself a SATA PCIx card like the one I mentioned in my earlier post. SecureBoot doesn't work and it'll take a little longer to start to boot but it's hell of a lot quicker than a spinning disk.

When I bought my 280 G2 there was pretty much a choice between the HP, Lenovo and Fujitsu all at the same type of price/spec. Wish I'd gone for one of the other two now. HP workstations and servers were always pretty good but wont be touching one of their PCs again.

[Deerpark_Man]

Did you ever get a result on this one?

I have the exact same issue with a HP 280 GT M2 desktop. Installl V46 of BIOS bang no boot from PC and the only way to get any access to the system is to disconnect the Crucial SSD (MX300). Then you can get into the BIOS and fiddle I changed secure boot, booted W10 recovery USB key and managed to get the BIOS up to V48 however not I cannot reverse it back down to the older revision.

I should also add the HP BIOS creation tool DOES NOT create a USB bootable key it just places files on the key. I have to use Lazesoft recovery Windows 10 type and then I could only flash to version 48 it does not allow me to flash back.

This has been a nightmare... ideas apreciated.